The person who discovered that CFCs harm the ozone layer

An obituary was published today for Sherry Rowland, the UC Irvine professor who discovered in 1973 that CFCs could harm the ozone layer.  He shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Paul Crutzen and Mario Molina for this discovery.  I got to sit in on a class he taught to graduate students while I was a postdoc at UC Irvine in 1997.  His introductory comments about the relationship of science to the larger economic life of the country were memorable.  He showed a picture of a shark feeding, with lots of little fish nearby eating the little scraps that were inconsequential to the shark.  "Scientists sometimes think that we drive the economy," he said.  "But really, we are more like the little fish in this picture, and the shark is the economy.  The shark doesn't mind if the little fish eat the excess scraps floating around, but if they go after the main meal there's going to be trouble."